Injustice has permeated the criminal legal system and its punitive regime for as long as this society has existed. The rapidly expanding American carceral state arose from a myriad of retributive policies and legislation that became prevalent throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century. There is currently an abundance of research focused on the effects of incarceration on people of diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. A crucial gap in prison reform research remains the effects of this system of punishment on LGBTQ+ people. My research endeavor aims to address that fact and reveal how individuals with queer sexual or gender identities have been impacted by this system within Washington State. The institutions that exact punishment in this state operate both on a heteronormative apparatus and a gender binary. My thesis involves placing formerly incarcerated LGBTQ+ people at the forefront of prison reform research to highlight their distinctive adversities and establish policy proposals to ameliorate them. I conducted interviews with people who fit this demographic to bring to light their lived experiences and discover what practices, policies, and changes they want to see implemented. The findings illustrate a need for reform in areas including programming opportunities, support systems, healthcare accessibility, gender-affirming care, therapeutic services, housing assignments, reentry assistance, and equitable treatment overall. Incarcerated LGBTQ+ individuals are subjected to exacerbated punishment from correctional staff and other incarcerated individuals, which leads to difficulties with interpersonal dynamics and an overall suppression of identity. Faced with heightened vulnerabilities while incarcerated, LGBTQ+ people maintain resilient attitudes as they reenter society and positively transform their lives. The voices of this community in this research illuminates the necessity of addressing LGBTQ+ rights within prison reform efforts.

Seattle’s housing crisis has been a central issue in local politics as it has intensified over the past decade. Stringent zoning restrictions, rising construction costs, and a rapidly growing, high-income workforce have worsened the housing crisis, making challenges evident to many Seattle residents. A key player is Amazon, whose presence and expansion in the heart of Seattle have spurred opportunities while simultaneously worsening challenges. Although Amazon initially maintained a distance from political involvement, its opposition to the 2018 Head Tax—designed to fund affordable housing—marked a pivotal shift in its civic engagement. After successfully lobbying to repeal the tax and attempting to influence City Council elections, Amazon faced public backlash, prompting a strategic pivot toward philanthropy. My research question is: How has Amazon’s response to political and regulatory pressures influenced its philanthropic approach through the Housing Equity Fund? This paper examines Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund, a $2 billion initiative to finance affordable housing in Seattle, Washington D.C., and Nashville. I analyzed local and national media coverage and interviewed community stakeholders—including academics, housing nonprofit professionals, and developers connected to Amazon. The findings suggest that while Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund offers essential capital for housing development, its structure excludes the lowest-income populations most affected by Seattle’s affordability crisis—those who would have benefited from the 2018 Head Tax Amazon opposed. Moreover, the initiative allows Amazon to represent itself as a responsible neighbor while continuing to resist direct taxation and government-led housing solutions. Ultimately, I highlight the implications of private sector influence in public affairs, raising questions about accountability and the repercussions of corporate involvement in societal issues.

Using the University of Washington and its ties to the fossil fuel and weapons manufacturing industries, this paper investigates how industry funding and other ties to colonial and neoliberal universities impact the knowledge and opinions of students. This study analyzes the nature and extent of these ties using archival data collected via public records requests, UW websites, and interviews with student protestors, and then it cross analyzes this information with data collected from an anonymous cross-sectional survey with nearly 900 UW student participants. This survey gauged student knowledge and opinions on the climate crisis, fossil fuels, and fossil fuel companies, as well as (US) militarism, warfare (especially in the case of “israel’s” genocide in Palestine), and weapons companies. The answers for each question had pre-determined rankings of beneficiality of the represented knowledge/opinions to the fossil fuel or weapons industries, based on industry disinformation campaigns and corporate strategies. My analysis shows that the knowledge and opinions of students in the UW college/school with the most ties to the fossil fuel and weapons industries (the College of Engineering) are more beneficial to the industries than those of other students, and the difference is statistically significant for many of the questions. The same held true when comparing departments within this college based on the extent of their ties to the given industries, and when holding constant other factors such as years completed at UW and courses taken related to the climate crisis. The correlation weakened, disappeared, or reversed when only considering students in their first year at the UW and/or who had not taken any classes related to the climate crisis, thus providing evidence that the relationship is causative, supporting the hypothesis that university-corporate ties cause students to develop knowledge and opinions that are beneficial to the industry. 

The findings of this study make sense in the context of, and may bolster, existing research on colonial harms of universities, the relationship between industry funding and research agendas and results, university-corporate ties, and student to industry pipelines. However, none of these specifically study the influence of university-corporate ties on student knowledge and opinions, so this study fills in this important gap in research. This contribution will be important to not only related research but to student movements across the country and their campaigns to urge their universities to cut ties with corporations, particularly those against the fossil fuel and weapons industries at the University of Washington.

Sex trafficking has been a focus of legal attention for decades and is addressed in laws aimed at protecting victims. However, these protections often fall short, leaving victims unable to escape cycles of abuse. Through investigation of federal and state law, scholarly articles, and interviews with legal professionals and victim community resource workers, I examine the question: How does the legal system succeed and fail in supporting victims of sex trafficking? My research investigates demographic patterns among victims, systemic legal barriers, community advocacy initiatives, and the impact of federal trafficking, prostitution, and digital privacy laws. My findings are organized into four sections: an overview of trafficking and demographics, the legal barriers facing victims, the emerging challenges of digital trafficking and victim-centered reform recommendations. Victims face legal obstacles in many aspects. The legal system's requirement for victim testimony, often in the presence of abusers, frequently leads to case dismissals due to non-cooperation. This combined with distrust of law enforcement among trafficking survivors, further deters trafficked persons from seeking state assistance. A comparative case study of Florida and Washington State law illustrates how varying approaches to prostitution law can lead to victim criminalization. The constant evolution of trafficking through social media and online forums heightens the need for systemic victim-centered reform. To effectively dismantle trafficking, the law must address the economic need that creates space for trafficking to thrive, and work to decrease the demand for trafficked sex. The legal system needs to embrace victim-centered reform that incorporates the testimonies of survivors in structuring policy to adequately support victims of sex trafficking.

The goal of this project is to evaluate the effects of the Migrant Protection Protocols on asylum seekers and their advocates. Asylum seekers who presented themselves at the U.S. Southern border, whether through official ports of entry or otherwise, would be given notices to appear in immigration court. Until their immigration hearing for asylum, they were sent back to Mexico to wait. To ground my research, I performed a literature review of the history of U.S. asylum law. The texts focused on the 1920s-1940s to the present day, but I also included some texts that began their timelines in the 1800s. I hypothesized that restrictionist immigration policies like the Migrant Protection Protocols do not protect anyone; but rather, are a means to limit advocates’ ability to support asylum seekers, as they are now on opposite sides of the border. The barriers in front of asylum seekers are increasing under the current United States federal government. ‘Asylum seeker’ is not a protected status. What is or is not a protected ground for an asylum claim can change at a moment’s notice. Therefore, my research question asks how asylum seekers and their advocates are choosing to respond and adapt to changes in asylum policy in the present day. The stakes are high for asylum seekers and their advocates. Asylum is a highly discretionary process, and therefore who makes the rules can be the difference between entry and rejection to the U.S. To conduct this study, I performed participant observation. I attended public lectures, community events, and volunteered with local organizations. In addition, I conducted informational interviews with legal professionals. By gaining a better understanding of the positionality of asylum seekers and their advocates, we can learn how to develop policies with the voices of those most directly involved in mind.

Love and family are both core components of the human experience and are inherently emotionally complex. While the law is popularly thought to uphold reason alone, our innate sense of humanity makes it nearly impossible to separate law from emotion when discussing family reunification, a core principle of U.S immigration law. Through my research, I aim to define what emotions applicants express when making different kinds of appeals. I also examine how these emotions are employed in storytelling and the construction of personal narratives. This project explores the following question: Considering that the law is designed to be neutral and objective, what role does human emotion play, if any, in influencing family reunification-based immigration decision outcomes? To answer this question, I conducted a detailed textual analysis of letters to USCIS written on behalf of individuals attempting to gain legal status. To supplement the data gathered from the letters, I interviewed several immigration lawyers and one retired immigration judge about the role emotion plays in their careers and how they advise clients to employ (or withhold) their own emotions. My findings were consistent with my hypothesis that emotion plays a critical role in the field of immigration law, particularly in persuasive storytelling. I discovered that throughout the letters, which tended to center themes of fear and distress, the resounding tone and overall message was one of love and hope for a better future. This research contributes to the recently expanding field of law and emotion scholarship. It seeks to demonstrate that our innate sense of humanity is not only irrepressible but plays a significant role in legal decision making where discretion is involved.  

Democratic backsliding has become a prominent and undeniable feature of contemporary world politics while greatly affecting international criminal law. This raises a question of what elements of the justice system and global politics have the most effect on incentivizing international cooperation in pursuit of global justice. This thesis answers this dilemma through analysing case studies of significant past international criminal tribunals, namely the International Military Tribunal and the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia. Through examining the nature and effect of complementarity, criminal procedure, and political motivations, on the level of international cooperation, this research provides policy and reform recommendations for the International Criminal Court to enhance its ability to serve justice with the stable and continuous support of the international community amid the many challenges that come with the global rise of authoritarianism.